He’s talking about Baltimore, specifically, and the Dos Passos reference refers to the novelist’s view, stated in the 1920s, that America was a place where the rich lived in one reality, and the poor lived in another. But I think Teachout’s point goes much deeper, and involves more nations than two within the United States.

What holds us together, or could hold us together? One might have said once upon a time that Christianity did — that’s what Tocqueville saw — and later, one might have said civic religion (generic Christianity + “Americanism”). These were ideals we held in common, and they served as shared ideals toward which we strove, despite our imperfections and failings.

Now, though? What is the common thread? What is the tie that binds us to our home? What is the law that rules our hearts? It is mere anarchy; the Baltimore rioters are only farther along the line of logic than the rest of the country is. They’re destroying their city because of lawlessness in their hearts, but the rest of us are destroying the basis for self-governance and order in our polis too. It’s all going, going … because in America, freedom is always the winning mantra.

UPDATE: Reading the comments this morning, it appears that more than a few readers think I’m defending the Baltimore police, and police brutality. I’m not. Contempt for the law breeds contempt for the law. What I’m saying is that this contempt for the law is a lot more widespread in our society than among Baltimore cops and Baltimore rioters.

Islam is the third-largest faith in the United States, after Christianity and Judaism. It is followed by 0.6% of the population.[2][3]
There are 2.595 million Muslim adherents across the country in 2010.[106] Islamic populations are 0.6% of the US population per Fareed Zakaria quoting Pew Research Center, 2010.

According to the 2000 United States Census, the state with the largest percentage of Muslims is Michigan, with 1.2% of its population being Muslim. New Jersey has the second largest percentage with 0.9%, followed by Massachusetts with 0.8%.

New York City had the largest number of Muslims with 69,985. In 2000, Dearborn, Michigan ranked second with 29,181, and Los Angeles ranked third with 25,673; although Paterson, New Jersey, in the New York City Metropolitan Area, was estimated to have become home to 25,000 to 30,000 Muslims as of 2011. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was estimated to have 30,000 to 50,000 Muslims as of 2012.[109]

When is that 0.6% of the population going to take over the country & impose Sharia law?

For those of you dreaming of becoming two states – one ruled by leftists and one ruled through proxy by leftists. Why would you want his?

A) There are no leftists in power in America, there are Centrist commonly known as Democrats or Liberals and there are Right Wingers commonly known as Republicans.

B) If this Country were to breakup, it would break up in far more than two States, The Blue States are on the West Coast & the North East and are not contiguous to each other. A break up would lead to at the very minimum to three States.

C) Because they dream of dream of being on top and being able to put their foot on someone’s neck and keeping it there.

“The Atlantic slave trade in the United States ended officially in 1808. How many white Americans can trace at least one ancestor back to 1808 or before? I have seen estimates around 80% or higher. Considering lots of black Americans today are descendants of post-1965 immigrants from the Caribbean or more recently Africa, I bet the black-white ratio of “deep roots” is pretty close to even.
”

Yes, most White Americans can trace some ancestors back to revolutionary times. Nearly all of them though, ALSO have ancestors who arrived here much later. For African Americans, nearly all of them are indeed descended from people who arrived here before 1805, or the Anglo-Saxons who impregnated their slaves. In other words, yes, African Americans have deeper roots here.

The police officer who killed Walter Scott in South Carolina laughed about the adrenaline rush he was feeling, in a conversation that offers a new insight into his mindset in the minutes after the shooting.

Patrolman Michael Slager made the remarks during a discussion with a senior officer after fatally shooting Scott in North Charleston on 5 April. A recording of their conversation was obtained by the Guardian.

Audio of the call.
“By the time you get home, it would probably be a good idea to kind of jot down your thoughts on what happened,” the senior officer said. “You know, once the adrenaline quits pumping.”

The people who did this should be caught, tried, and sent to prison for lengthy terms. That however, does not justify the systematic police brutality system the BPD operated against the African community. See how easy it is?

Factually and analytically this is very simple, which is why its so difficult to do anything effective about it.

Basically, there are two motives for slamming the police:

1) Thugs want the police off their back, and want as much political cover as they can get toward that end, and,

2) A fair chunk of the police do their job as if they are an occupying army and every citizen they meet is a probable criminal suspect, and a fair chunk of the rest of the force lines up to defend “one of our own” when caught.

To effectively reform the situation, these strands need to be unwound, law abiding citizens with valid beefs about the cops need to separate themelves out from the thugs, and cops who want to do a good, professional job and build community ties needs to dissolve the thin blue line, and help purge their own ranks.

Trying to make sense of what’s going on in Baltimore is impossible when you have 3 incomprehensible factors at play:

1) cops hauling off a guy with a broken back and were completely indifferent to it. These cops must have Aced the misanthropy class back at the academy.

2) Neighborhood low-life punks who never pass up a chance to cause mayhem because…it breaks the boredom and gives them a chance to live out their gangsta rap fantasies while mugging it for the cameras. Who knows, it could lead to a reality show for somebody who dons the do-rag and low-hanging pants the most menacing way.

3) Outside left-wing agitprop professionals who enter the ‘hood to encourage the low-lifes while portraying the outcome as oppressed people “burning down the master’s house.” And these people want their student loans forgiven??

Yet another person who doesn’t grasp the difference between *explanation* and *justification*. The original post was entirely consistent. You just didn’t like what it told you.

I understand the difference between explanation and justification. I simply also understand the following: agency is a perfectly valid form of explanation (granted far more complex in nature, patterns of decisions rather than fatalistic social structures) and the claim that an action is inexcusable implies agency. These two yield my conclusion. And please don’t paint me as a fool; you have no idea what you are talking about in that regard.

I am not startled by these increasing incidents of civil unrest. They reflect increasing income inequality as a result of an artificial imbalance between labor and capital caused by off-shoring production to the third world, and mass immigration to destroy wages in service industries. They are the direct result of certain “inevitable” decisions of the American elite, decisions directly against the best interest of their country men. They are a reflection of the narcissism and corruption of the baby-boom generation, a syndrome that manifests in areas beyond the economy.

It will really get fun when the bloated class of billionaires realize that only some of them (because of the limited number of positions of power) will exercise influence and the other billionaires will have to take a backseat. Then the titans will wage war in heaven, using the people on Earth as pawns in their battles.

The thing about these latest events is the deja vu, the ‘history repeating as farce’ aspect. Theres ‘The Community Anger’, there’s the ‘Religious Leaders’, there’s the ‘Righteous Negro’ (this one the alleged 30 year Army (including ‘Nam’) vet — I say ‘alleged’ because he wore his ‘uniform’ in a way I can’t imagine any 30 year man wearing). There’s the righteous anger at the very events they helped provoke (I’m looking at you CNN). There’s the constant refrain distinguishing ‘legitimate protestors’ vs. ‘thugs and looters’ as if group A doesn’t often morph into group B. And of course today we will have ‘community leaders’ and ‘clergy’ holding arms and sweeping up little patches of street despite their own so legitimate ‘Anger’ ™. There’s the ‘wake up call’ trope. There’s the ‘on the street’ reporters trying to pretend half the people they interview make anything approaching sense (of times putting words in interviewees’ mouths to salvage some meaning from the interview)

And oh, there’s the white weekend warriors — suburban cops and firemen and construction guys and middle managers — dressed in their Guard togs and carrying M-16s, who really resotre order (though, of course now a days under command of a ‘person of color’)

It’s hilarious that Lefties here have to hark back to 1834, or maybe 1919, to find ‘white parallels’ to the periodic mass black violence we’ve seen (at least once a decade) since the 1960s.

Here’s some differences. In 1834, even in 1919, people had little to no welfare state, public education was limited in places to the 8th grade, and most of all, the rioters were capable of (and were in fact) building a civilization. Given the current condition of Detroit, Camden, Selma, Newark–it’s debatable whether our latter day rioters are.

OK, let’s play the game. Why are Baltimore cops evil? If something led the youths of Baltimore to riot last night, I’m guessing something led the police of Baltimore toward the routine use of brutality. What is it?

I don’t know the hearts of Baltimore cops; frankly, I suspect some diversity of character, but maybe that’s crazy talk.

What is clear is that Baltimore is a particularly egregious example of the myriad ways in which police are held to a lower standard than the people they are supposed to control. I’m not a wild-eyed optimist; it would be too much to expect every cop who severs a prisoner’s spine to face murder charges. A real chance of being fired would be an improvement, though, as would a procedure less finely tuned to excuse misconduct.

In the big picture, riots in the US have been getting smaller and rarer for some time; this is salutary, and if “anarchic hearts” are the reason, count me in favor. When it comes to police misconduct, I’ve seen many suggest, over the last year or so, that it is rising. But what I haven’t seen anything to back this sense up beyond the proliferation of headlines. Certainly improvement is desirable, but it is not clear whether such improvement would be arresting decline, furthering progress, or ending stagnation.

The problem with this is of course that even by that reading, American history is a story of stability is a story of peacefulness, occasionally fractured by periods of violence, that had only really killed a significant number of people or threatened the Republic once, during the civil war period. The history of every ethnically homogenous country in Europe in the last 150 years or so is much worse.

So are you taking the position that shared culture doesn’t matter? What do you believe is a meaningful definition of what it means to be an American?

Shared cultural identity is important, but it is not the only factor that guarantees peace. Economics and living conditions certainly play an important role, both here and in Europe. I should have made that point more clear. Nevertheless, your comparison to Europe is incorrect and somewhat of a red herring.

First of all, it’s difficult to make an apples-to-apples comparison between the US and any given European nation over the past 150 years. No European nation had the natural blessings of the US, such as a resource rich continent free of major power competitors that allowed people to expand rather than crowd together and a massively powerful economy resulting from those natural riches and distance from serious rivals (which was therefore able to withstand two World Wars not only unscathed, but strengthened) that allowed for a steady improvement in quality of life for most people.

On top of that, the US featured a political system flexible enough to address grievances but inflexible enough to withstand radicalization, an accompanying economic system that allowed significant numbers of people to advance and thrive (and thereby served to encourage hope rather than violence), and a conformity-emphasizing culture that was ultimately able to largely assimilate waves of European immigrants (ironically, this was probably helped by the existence of clear out-groups- blacks and American Indians- which encouraged immigrant groups to try to adopt the general Anglo culture lest they be lumped in with the blacks). Take some of these features away, and I doubt the US stays as peaceful as it has been.

Moreover, the majority of violence in the context of modern Europe has not been internal civil war, but rather war between nations or wars to achieve national independence from a multinational state. The European revolutions and uprisings largely dealt with issues which weren’t applicable to the US; e.g. economic driven and nationalist revolutions against autocratic governments and entrenched, multi-national aristocracies. Nevertheless, the more homogenous nations (e.g. the Scandinavian nation) were better off and more peaceful than the ethnically diverse countries (e.g. Austria-Hungary, Yugoslavia, Russia).

Besides, of all the European nations of the past 150 years, which have experienced a true civil war inside of a single country (in contrast to wars between successor national groups like those following the breakup of Yugoslavia) that approached the relative severity of the US Civil War? Arguably only Spain and Russia.

All of that is beside the point. It does not rebut my contention, which is that it’s easier to riot and rebel against someone with whom you don’t believe you share anything in common. Along the same lines, it’s easier to oppress people with whom you don’t identify. When was the last serious US riot that did not have an appreciable racial component?

In the US, race is practically a stand in for nationality. I get the feeling that due to history, black Americans and white Americans have as much comradery as Serbs and Croats. We’re close and share significant history, but there is so much bad blood that its hard to see any true reconciliation. Comparisons between the police force and an occupying army make sense when viewed in that regard; the police are essentially armed officials representing a different nation.

The African slaves and free blacks were simply not part of the polity created by the Founders of this polity. Even Lincoln thought they should be removed, a legacy population that could not be integrated.

I think that that’s the profound, yet simple, point that’s almost always overlooked. The U.S. was founded as a civic nation, but one with an obvious (but not quite official) ethnic national foundation. Blacks never really fit within the nation and were never really intended to. It is a really good way of explaining the concept of “white privilege”. It’s no shock that a country established by and for a particular ethnic group would establish institutions designed to favor that ethnic group. Complaining about white privilege in the US is in that sense is like complaining about Han privilege in China.

The real question, then, is not whether white privilege exists in the US, but rather whether white privilege should exist in the US. For most of US history, most Americans would have likely said “yes” to that question without hesitation.

We’re now in the process of rejecting the fundamental assumption of that there is and should be a (white, European) ethnic nation that undergirds the US civic nation. The question that remains is whether this transition to a pure civic nation will be possible. Will we be able to shape a new, cohesive, and unified multi-ethnic, multi-cultural America, or will the whole project collapse and be replaced by successor states with their own ethnic foundations?

The most interesting aspect of all of this is what role Hispanics will play- will they become the newest group of “whites”, following in the footsteps of Italians, Greeks, and Slavs? Will they reject “whiteness” and seek to establish something new in concert with blacks and other current minorities?

I think it’s too soon to tell how this fundamental transformation will play out, but I am certain that the next 50 years are going to be very interesting.

And there is absolutely nothing, nothing, so “Anglo-Protestant” in the modern Anglophone world than the Whiggish, Biblical-literalist strawman-seeking, Black Legend-mongering inanities of the New Atheism, I assure you.

Irenist, I like you a lot — as panda said, you make great points and have been very kind to Rod’s other readers in a way that is rare around here. But I don’t think that Biblical literalism is a straw man. In fact it would be very easy to make the case that inerrantism and literalism are the primary expressions of contemporary Evangelical doctrine. There’s a reason that scientific-minded new atheists write and speak so much about Biblical literalism: they are the ones who are tasked with countering YEC apologetics and teaching evolution and cosmology to resistant students. The Southern Baptist Convention is the second-largest religious group in the US, and is overwhelmingly young-earth creationist, with the remainder mostly disbelieving in evolution. Combine this with the fact that this brand of Evangelicalism has deep pockets and a huge megaphone, it’s not quite fair to call it a straw man.

It’s not the whole story, obviously, and many new atheists are unaware of other approaches to scripture, authority, and theology. But here’s the thing: most of these Evangelicals are just as ignorant about it. I have to correct my family quite often when they say that by definition a Catholic can’t be a Christian because they worship the Pope instead of Jesus and don’t take the Bible as the word of God. They just assume that after Jesus died all the Christians were Evangelicals and then the Catholic Church came along and corrupted the Biblical worldview with all their Traditions Of Man. And how would they know any differently? They do mostly manual labor and have no time to study history, and they’ll believe anything someone who got them to feel the Holy Spirit says.

The long and short of it is that when religion does come up in these contexts, it is most likely to be this kind of Evangelicalism because of its contrarian stance on basic science. And when it does, it’s the only version of it the two parties of the dispute know.

Finally, I should add that when the new atheist movement started last decade, what made it “new” was the idea that (many, maybe most) people of faith really do believe what their religious leaders teach, and really do take their scriptures literally. It was kind of a reaction to the kind of atheism that took a step beyond Tillich or Karen Armstrong by reducing religion into (merely) a semiotic system or an approach that works the mythos of (mere) stories into everyday life. I think the new atheism is actually a beneficent swing of the pendulum: it is a corrective to the “well, of course, nobody really believes this, but…” of lots of secular discourse in the humanities especially.* The movement is slowly getting more literate on other kinds of theology, but it is unfortunately still preoccupied with holy books.

*Walter Kaufmann, the philosopher and major translator of Nietzsche and Martin Buber was there several decades before. His two books “Critique of Religion and Philosophy” and “Faith of a Heretic” are must-reads for atheists and religious people who are curious about what the philosophical roots of new atheism should probably be.

To add to Another Matt’s post about biblical literalism. It’s not just the Southern Baptists, they’re simply the most visible group. Depending upon the poll somewhere between 33% (PEW) to 40% (Gallup) of the US population holds young Earth creationist beliefs.

There’s the Discovery Institute, the Institute for Creation Research, and the Creation Museum all striving to make such ideas seem like they have some sort of scientific merit, and that we should teach the contraversy. Back in the naughts President Bush said that he believes schools should discuss intelligent design alongside evolution.

Re: the rioters were capable of (and were in fact) building a civilization.

Um, no, and that’s almost trivially true. The people building/maintaining a civilization were the ones NOT rioting. The rioters were engaged in the opposite endeavor, tearing down civilization.

It’s also worth noting that the events in Baltimore Monday involved a few hundred delinquent kids– out of a population of hundreds of thousands. Yesterday the people of West Baltimore were out in force cleaning up the mess and derfusing tensions and even enjoying a bit of an impromptu street party by dinner time.

Baltimore is a poorer city. Nevertheless most people are working. The city was pretty well destroyed by an influx of Blacks and outflow of manufacturing jobs. High taxes and welfare didn’t help either.

For those who don’t know the city it would be educational to visit for a week. A bicycle is the best way to see the city. So much American history. The city was once wealthy and prosperous and the ruins of old wealth can be found on the zoo grounds, old manufacturing buildings and remarkable houses in now ruined neighborhoods (one can see eight mailboxes on a single family residence of a once wealthy merchant).

Before the city can make a rebound it will probably have to fall down altogether.

M_Young: I think it is relevant. Once every population on Earth was capable of rioting and did so rather frequently. Then, at some time in the twentieth century, whites and East Asians stopped. So “Why did they stop, and are there lessons that can stop rioting by other groups?” strikes me as a very relevant question.

“It’s not the whole story, obviously, and many new atheists are unaware of other approaches to scripture, authority, and theology. But here’s the thing: most of these Evangelicals are just as ignorant about it. I have to correct my family quite often when they say that by definition a Catholic can’t be a Christian because they worship the Pope instead of Jesus and don’t take the Bible as the word of God. They just assume that after Jesus died all the Christians were Evangelicals and then the Catholic Church came along and corrupted the Biblical worldview with all their Traditions Of Man. And how would they know any differently? They do mostly manual labor and have no time to study history, and they’ll believe anything someone who got them to feel the Holy Spirit says.”

There is a critical issue about whether it’s possible to hold “inerrantist” views of Scripture and *also* be a Protestant of any description. How could God ever allow Rome to get it wrong?

It’s hilarious that Lefties here have to hark back to 1834, or maybe 1919, to find ‘white parallels’ to the periodic mass black violence we’ve seen (at least once a decade) since the 1960s.

The Looney Left went back to 1834 because Rod quoted Tocqueville about America. There are two ‘white’ examples: first, the KKK/South/North reaction to Civil Rights was violent in which churches were burned and MLK was shot. Then, our over reaction to 9/11 in which the country decided Iraq must be invaded for….Some master plan that would have led to blossoming of democracy in the Middle East. (And yes half the Democrats voted for it.)

Not really. What usually happens in these instances is that the criminal elements uses a large gathering like a protest to misbehave since it’s easier to get away with looting and pillaging when there are several thousand people camouflaging the activity and distracting law enforcement’s attention. That was the cases Saturday night when a hitherto orderly protest started seeing scattered disorderly acts about the time the sun went down providing cover of darkness.

As for Monday, there was no protest at all: Gray’s family had asked that there be none on the day of his funeral. Instead the criminal element appears to have ginned up some mayhem by sending menacing texts about a “purge”, which panicked brain-dead city officials into shutting down the public buses– which are used by students to travel to and from school. Hence hundreds of teenagers from a nearby high school were marooned at Mondawin Mall (a major bus depot and Metro stop) unable to get home, creating cover for the looters to come out and play. (A number of those kids are writing angry letters from school today complaining about the blame the media has dumped on them). Something similar was tried yesterday, except the text-mentioned targets were two malls in the suburbs, one of which is within spitting distance of the office where I work. The malls were closed early (as was my office) but otherwise no one took the bait, and it’s all back to normal today.

It’s no shock that a country established by and for a particular ethnic group would establish institutions designed to favor that ethnic group.

The fundamental flaw in that thinking is the same as the fundamental flaw in bringing an African population here under a different legal status than the amorphously defined and redefined “white” population: Once they’re here, they’re here. Logistics along defeated Lincoln’s hope for mass deportation. Anyway, while they may not be “just like” those of European descent, they became something more American than African. Not a few who made the pilgrimage to the Mother Continent have learned, to their inspiration or dismay, that they really don’t belong there.

When I look at the people of obvious African descent around me in church, or at my neighbors or fellow workers, I don’t ask myself, would it have been better for us all if their ancestors had never been brought here? That’s a moot point.

Aslan told Lucy many times “What would have happened? No one is ever told that.” They ARE my fellow congregants, my neighbors, my fellow workers… They were born HERE, not somewhere else. And they are perfectly good people to have as all of the above.

Are there some disagreeable people with dark complexion? Sure there are. But then, I grew up in a small midwestern city with NO black population. Let me tell you about some of the disagreeable people at my elementary school, and among the high school students I occasionally encountered on my way to it, and…

Re: So “Why did they stop, and are there lessons that can stop rioting by other groups?”

Everyone is still capable of rioting. You still see “exuberance riots” by college students after major sporting contests and sometime at the end of semester.

But middle-aged, middle class people– well, not so much. Too much to lose and too little to gain.

PGL,

Baltimore’s black population has deep roots. This was a major port and slave depot in the bad old days. Baltimore was gung-ho for the CSA in the Civil War. The cute cannons up on Federal Hill pointed at downtown reflect the reality that the Union did install a battery up there pointed at the city to concentrate certain minds during the Late Unpleasantness. Though yes, black folk from rural parts of Maryland did move to the city for jobs during the heyday of its industrialization, and were marooned here when the factories went away. There’s white neighborhoods like that too.

Some neighborhoods are still good: there are bona fide mansions (still inhabited by the elite) on Charles St out past Hopkins. I had a coworker who came from money and his family bought him a house in Bolton Hill (walking distance to the riot area, yet strangely separate); he had a Christmas party I attended and the house– and neighborhood– were jaw-dropping. And next to my church (on Butchers Hill) stands a house that sold for half a million during the housing bubble. There’s money here still, you just have to keep an eye out for it– it keeps to itself.
(Interesting factoid: within walking distance of my house stands the 18th century plantation house of the Carroll family, preserved for tourists. It astonishes me that an actual plantation was once here, a modest walk to downtown and the harbor.)

I don’t disagree at all with your post of April 29, 2015 at 7:28 pm. I think that segregation and the one-drop rule were tragedies almost on par with slavery itself. Maybe if during Reconstruction blacks were able to move throughout the country and mingle with the white population we would have largely resolved the gap between white and black America right now. Given what actually happened, though, I’m pessimistic about the chances of there ever really being a true accord and integration between white America and black America.

I see the efforts being made today to bridge the gap as counter productive. The left’s tactics essentially amount to trying to demonize and humble white people. It creates an atmosphere in which justified black grievance is fanned and stoked to amazing degrees. Read a Brittney Cooper article on Salon (as well as the comments) for a glimpse. In them, the nugget of truth contained in concepts like “white privilege” are exaggerated to ridiculous degrees. The hyperbole and bigotry in that world view tends to antagonize white people like me, who resent being made out as being the villains and the cause of all misfortune. It’s a standoff, with each side being suspicious of the others’ motives and goals. I’m much less motivated to want to do my part to help the black community (even on an issue like police brutality where I think they have a point) when I think I’ll get hated in return.

I don’t know how this impasse will get resolved. I don’t think that any non-totalitarian government program would really do it. Hopefully enough people can ignore the firebrands on all side and make personal connections like the ones you speak of.

wycoff, I appreciate your reference to relevant facts and history. If you look around Rod’s columns, you will find that I yield to nobody in my sarcastic dismissal of the whole “white privilege” nonsense, as well as “white studies” and a whole host of liberal navel-gazing.

I’m not pessimistic about the possibility of a true accord and integration because I know what “integration” means. It means two distinct things being interwoven and blended. In actual fact, both are occuring, in negative ways as well as positive ways. (White hoodlums are more and more making common cause with black hoodlums, who less and less have the cover that their violent narcissism is “standing up to whitey” when their victims are almost entirely of their own color.)

Its not going to happen because of liberal programs. Now that the dams and levees have been dynamited, its happening on an individual and small group basis. I’ve lived most of my adult life in neighborhoods that are overwhelmingly black. The mother of a young man I was a big brother to, works as a school bus driver out in a suburban county (the one where Charles Cosimano lives). She told a fellow driver, “these white folks sure know how to keep up their houses,” and her friend responded “No, those are black folks, these are the projects out here.”

Its little things like that which will make a difference. That, and Ruthie Leming did have some students who veered off on the course she called them to. There’s going to be some nightmares for decades, but we’re not headed for the Final Cataclysm, nor to the final divide between Morlocks and Eloi (which ended rather badly for the Eloi, you may recall), but down a rather bumpy road with lots of twists and turns which is getting us to somewhere sort of somewhat better.

Two cultures aren’t going to engage. A bunch of individuals are. One of Rod’s more recent posts is about a man who set up a ministry on the wrong side of the river. The most important thing he is doing is being there, in the neighborhood, with the people he hopes to help. That’s number one. If you’re looking from the other side of the divide, and occasionally making a foray to deliver a sermon and hand out some food, forget it.

Connections are going to come in some unlikely ways, from the liberal point of view. I spend a lot of time at a very conservative Lutheran church, because it chose to stay fifty years ago when the area “turned over.” A lot of churches, including of their own denomination, didn’t. I regret that this church is teaching people that evolution is contrary to the Bible and therefore false, and that’s one reason I’m not a communicant. But the point is, integration is occuring there, not only in “liberal” milieus. And lately, there has been a Mass Choir that cuts across not only racial but urban/suburban lines.

Barack Obama’s election as president was a symptom — a good one, but don’t expect him to be much of an agent. He can’t be, that’s not where this sort of change is going to happen.